I have this problem too. I use APM since I can't even install Win2k with ACPI enabled. My drives won't power down when I try it with Adaptec EZ-SCSI either. I can force them down but not long after Win2k will spin them right back up again.
Anyone know the answer to this one?

Sorry I dont have an answer but why would u want to power them down? I'v heard from a acouple sources that its a bad idea to power down ur drives, very bad acatully. Thats where all the damage occurs spinning up and down.

Looks right, HDD almost have same MTBF regardless of whether it is in spin down or in full rotation state of operation, only power is save.

I have heard it is better to power down, but if you say it is better to leave them running, that I shall do, and not worry about powering them down.....

yes but the MTBF (mean time between failures) is not accurate, i mean, i think the mtbf of alot of HDD's is like 52 yrs. now you and i both know that they didn't test them for 52yrs, so they take 1000's of them and run them for weeks/monthes or whatever and then estimate and crap. with that said, you really don't know when your hdd's gonna fail, could be today, tomorrow, or in 52yrs(i hope not 52yrs). Personally i don't turn my comp. off or let the hdd's spin down for that matter, think for a second, it puts alot more stress on the hdd to start up the spinning of the platters than it does to keep them spinning. thats my opinion anyway.

Just a bit of information, setting hardrives to power down in win2k (at least with ntfs) is pointless as the hardrives never go inactive do to journaling, nothing wrong with hardware or software, it just never stops long enough for the system to activate it. Also this is why your hard drive light will flicker on ever couple of secs, mins whatever (in addition to background indexing server running, defrag or whatever other services you have running on your box) For what its worth I too run my systems 24x7 never turning any of them off and have never had a hard drive fail that wasn't killed by a spike/surge or power failure while writing etc.
 
Jabbathewocket

I agree and am not going to worry about it. The only reason I wanted them to power down is heat. I have 4 high-rpm UW and/or U2W scsi drives and they are hot, hot, HOT. What I will do instead is just get some big-ass cooling fans and let the drives run happily.

Deckard if you have 4 scsi drives running, I hope you have a full size tower with a lot of bays so you can separate those drives for cooling.
 
You are also going to need extra hard drive coolers and good air flow through your tower, or you're going to start having component failure in your computer. I've seen a full size tower with dual proc and five scsi drives running NT Server, and you could keep lunch warm on that thing.

With win9x I'd go through about 1 harddrive a year. Each one ending up more pitted than a monkeys arse.
 
However with my mobo fic 503+ when the system goes into suspend it doesn't wakeup. The remedy: Disable suspend and use hibernation instead, not too much of a speed difference, and it saves even more power.

I agree, Hibernate kicks ass...
 
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